FOUNT OF WISDOM: Theodore Roosevelt and the measure of greatness

Posted 3/3/15

Does someone who has accumulated great wealth through his or her own efforts qualify for greatness?

Someone who has provided jobs and opportunity for others? Someone who’s led a nation or people through the trial of war or great political …

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FOUNT OF WISDOM: Theodore Roosevelt and the measure of greatness

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As an unemployed bum, I’ve had plenty of time and solitude to think lately. One of the things I’ve been contemplating is the question: What constitutes a great man or woman? Is it the sheer numbers of lives affected?

Does someone who has accumulated great wealth through his or her own efforts qualify for greatness?

Someone who has provided jobs and opportunity for others? Someone who’s led a nation or people through the trial of war or great political turmoil? How about someone who has spoken truth to power at the risk of their own life?

Maybe there are different kinds of greatness. I just finished reading a book about Theodore Roosevelt after his defeat in the presidential election of 1912. The book is called “River of Darkness” and it details his journey on a previously unexplored great river in the Amazon basin. TR, who I have to count as my favorite American president, was devastated after his defeat as the Progressive candidate. He had been elected and served previously as a Republican, and assured the Republican Party he wouldn’t run again after leaving office. But he was disappointed in the performance of his successor, William Howard Taft, and changed his mind.

He succeeded in assuring Taft’s defeat and his own by splitting the party, and the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson, won handily.

Toward the end of the campaign, Teddy was nearly assassinated by a nutcase with a pistol. His folded speech and glasses case saved his life as the bullet had to pass through them into his chest. He refused medical treatment and gave his speech with a bullet lodged 5 inches deep in his chest.

“It’ll take more than that to kill a bull moose,” he roared to the crowd. What’s not to like about a guy like that?

Roosevelt had been born to wealth but was an asthmatic and sickly child. His father encouraged him to fight his wimpiness by living a vigorous athletic life. That’s what he did, gradually building himself into a pretty robust, barrel-chested guy.

By contrast, his brother Elliot was handsome and athletic. Elliot died at a young age of alcoholism and morphine addiction and never did anything with his life.

The story of TR’s life is well known to most. He came out West and lived the life of a rancher in the Dakotas, hunted all over the world, including our neck of the woods, led the Rough Riders up San Juan Hill, dug the Panama Canal and championed the little guy.

He had his flaws, his human flaws. I don’t think his wife had much of a life while he was off on his adventures around the world, and he tended to glorify warfare. But he was courageous and tenacious and loved by the people who knew him personally.

In my estimation, that qualifies him as a great man.

And what about the Greatest Generation? Millions of regular Joes answered the call when another Roosevelt declared war on the Axis, giving up their lives in service to this country. Collectively they saved the world.

The book “Flags of Our Fathers” details the sacrifice of the famous guys who raised the flag on Iwo Jima, but there were countless other stories of heroism in those dark days. Guys whose stories were never told and never will be.

I am reminded of my friend Jim’s dad. He was a pilot on a B17 bomber in the European theater, crash-landing his shot up plane and being taken captive by partisans who turned him and his crew over to the Russians.

They threw him and his crew in a boxcar with some raw bacon to eat before eventually returning them to the Allied lines. After the war he was stationed in Germany, where he witnessed near starvation and learned there were a great many decent people in that country.

He was haunted for the rest of his life by his wartime and post-wartime experiences. He wasn’t an easy dad and had his flaws, but I think it could be said he was a great man, too. He brought his crew through a horrifying experience and went on to serve his country after the war, raising a family and doing his best to make sense of the craziness of this life.

He raised a pretty good guy in my friend.

I believe there are other measures of greatness, too. The people who quietly go about serving the powerless and those without a voice.

The folks who shovel dog poop voluntarily at the shelter while nobody’s watching. The doctors who fix cleft palates on children in Third World countries.

The guy who decided to make wheelchairs out of tubing and those cheap plastic lawn chairs and give them to poor people around the world. My mom, who does what she can where she can, whether it’s counseling drug-addicted women at a homeless shelter or driving sight-impaired people where they need to go, or making sure Dad doesn’t forget the weekly donation to the community food pantry.

My friend Mitch, who has kept me going the past year, and who has persevered despite great personal loss to succeed in the iffy business of raising crops in northern Wyoming. It’s guys like him who feed and clothe the world.

Not long ago, I saw a depressing study in which researchers asked a group of young people what they wanted to achieve in this life. A significant number said they wanted to become famous. Not famous for having achieved or discovered anything, just famous.

I was reminded of that awful TV show on the MTV network where a bunch of self absorbed, preening young adults are brought together to share a house. While there, they do nothing but party and carry on and misbehave.

At show’s end, they’re famous and are often given spinoff shows. For nothing other than vapid vacuous behavior. I daresay I’d like to line ’em up and mow em down. If you think that’s extreme, you’ve never seen the show.

There will never be another Theodore Roosevelt. But it may well be each of us has within our hearts a little bit of greatness too, and that greatness is best expressed when we’re living for something or somebody beyond our own immediate needs. When we’re lending a hand.

When we’re trying to help. When we’re being brave. When we don’t quit trying, no matter what.

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